Felicity loved and missed her mother. Her mother had been the shining light of her childhood, and the only restraint on her wayward father. Her death lowered the curtain on Felicity’s girlhood, allowing her father sudden, unfettered access to his addictions – gambling, wagers and the cards – thus setting the stage for an unpleasant adolescence.
Felicity could not remember a time when her father had not gambled. For her father Jem may have been a squire by inheritance but he was a spendthrift by nature, and he loved nothing more than to while away his hours gaming and drinking with friends. Felicity’s mother shielded her as best she could, keeping the small girl away from the billiard room, always overflowing with strange gentlemen, the smell of alcohol strong and sickly in the air. Laughs and shouts would travel through the house, and Felicity would turn her head towards the sounds. But her mother, with her usual calm demeanour, would admonish her gently.
‘It is gentlemen’s business, Felicity,’ she said softly. ‘It is not for our eyes or ears. You must learn to ignore such things. A lady’s place is in the parlour, over her sewing or reading. Not in the billiard room, over cards and coins.’
Felicity nodded, for she so wanted to be like her mother, so wanted to emulate the beautiful, gentle and calm woman who went about their home with an unruffled composure that both soothed and silenced. Even her father, who was strong-headed and wilful, was reduced to an apologetic state in the presence of her mother, swearing blindly – again and again – that he would give up the cards, give up the alcohol, that he would never wager again.
But her mother, raised in a tradition of meek and subservient womanhood and always expecting her place to be below that of her husband’s, would only smile at him.
‘It is your decision, my dear,’ she would reply. ‘I would only ask that you exercise restraint in the amounts you wager. We already owe so much … I am not sure how we can ever hope to repay our debts.’
But Felicity’s father was happy to ignore his wife’s sage advice, just as her mother was happy to ignore the negative numbers in their account book, the unpaid bills and angry visits from her father’s debtors. She was a lady, she told Felicity calmly, and a lady must not concern herself with the finances of her husband.
‘Money,’ she added placidly, ‘is a gentleman’s matter, and you must learn to ignore it. A woman’s place is to be found in caring for her family and her home. You must leave money and other such things to your menfolk.’
But one thing her mother could not ignore was the illness that suddenly gripped her the winter of Felicity’s fourth year. At first it was but a trifling pain, an annoyance, which made her catch her breath before moving on with her day. But soon it was an all-encompassing agony, a torturous illness which found her bed-bound and heavily dosed with opiates, lingering somewhere between life and death.
For Jem, the sudden decline of his wife might have been a turning point in his wayward life, a chance to turn around his idle existence. But when one morning Felicity stood before him, still dressed in her nightgown and clutching a battered blanket, he simply frowned at her.
‘Why aren’t you with the servants, girl?’
‘They’ve all gone, Pa,’ she replied easily.
‘Gone?’
‘Yes. You didn’t pay them last Sunday, and so they have gone.’
‘Well, ask your mother to …’ Jem began, but Felicity shook her head.
‘Ma’s asleep.’
He frowned at her again. ‘I’ve a game to attend at the assembly this evening. I can’t be playing nursemaid to a little girl.’
Felicity remained quiet, staring at him.
‘Well,’ Jem said, clearly uncomfortable in Felicity’s presence. ‘You’ll just have to come with me then, won’t you? So long as you’re quiet, and that you do as you’re told mind. Gaming’s an important business, and I don’t want you disrupting it, you hear?’
Soon, Felicity was a regular sight in the Cornish gaming hells, sitting quietly on her father’s knee while he gambled away what little was left of their livelihood. Before she ever learned to read she could count, educating herself at the card tables, mentally adding and subtracting tallies, coins and points. Whatever ladylike lessons her mother instilled in her quickly disappeared under a barrage of numbers, rules and wagers, and Felicity found delight in this whole new world of knowledge. Unlike her father, it was not the element of chance that thrilled her though. It was the orderly aspect of mathematics, the reassuringly unchanging nature of their world that appealed to her. Her father might be a gambler and a drunkard, her mother might be dying in an opium-sodden bed, but one plus one always equalled two, and five points in whist always won the game. For a mostly ignored child in an uncertain world, Felicity unwittingly sought out regulation and reliability in gaming, reassured by the rigid rules of mathematics. She would curl up next to her mother’s thin body at night, and do sums in her head, until she could no longer keep her eyes open and sleep claimed her.
One night she awoke to find her mother staring at her, her hazel eyes unnaturally large against her sunken cheeks and translucent skin, her hands limp by her side.
‘Ma?’ Felicity had whispered, but her mother made no reply, her lips dry, her breath fetid with sickness, and Felicity pushed down a frisson of disappointment. ‘Go back to sleep, Ma.’
But suddenly, one of her mother’s hands gripped her own. ‘Felicity,’ her mother whispered, and then again, ‘Felicity.’
‘I’m here, Ma. I’m here.’
‘Your Pa,’ her mother said, the sound a painful exhale. ‘He is … taking care …’
‘He is well, Ma,’ Felicity was quick to reassure her. ‘I’m taking care of him. Good care of him, I promise, Ma.’
Felicity’s mother seemed to sigh at that, her eyes closing briefly. When they opened again, they were cloudy, some of her lucidity gone.
‘No,’ she rasped again. ‘No … your Pa … he …’
‘I’m taking care of him, I promise, Ma,’ Felicity replied frantically. ‘I remember what you told me, Ma. A woman’s place is to be found in caring for her family and home. I listened, Ma, I promise you I did.’
But Felicity’s mother’s eyes closed again, and Felicity watched her mother sink back into the senseless relief of drugged sleep.
‘You don’t need to worry, Ma. I’ll always take care of Pa, I promise you,’ Felicity whispered fervently, clinging again to her mother’s skeletal form.
The next morning, Felicity felt cool skin and stiff limbs against her. Her mother was dead, and Felicity woke in the lifeless embrace of her corpse.
But there was no point in dwelling on that moment of horror. No point in mourning what was long gone. Felicity had made a promise to her mother to take care of her father, and whatever the cost, she would do just that.
With a sigh, Felicity reached for a sheet to wrap herself in. Thinking of her father invariably made her both angry and morose, and just as she shook the bathwater from her skin, she was determined likewise to shake off these lingering memories. This was not the time for indulging in pointless reveries, or acute melancholy.
It was not that she was emotionless, or without regrets. Like any young woman, Felicity harboured dreams and desires of her own, fantasies that were a thousand miles away from the stark reality of her shabby existence. But she’d made a promise to her mother and felt herself bound by that oath, an oath that she dutifully put before everything else, or anyone else. She’d willingly given up education, begrudgingly friendship, and with more regret, her girlhood fantasies of romance. Briefly, she recalled Tom Fox, the man who had given her his name, and, for a short time, his home. But there had been no love in their marriage, no softly-spoken words of adoration, or promises for a brighter future. Their marriage had been a sham, a bargain made between two desperate outcasts of society, and she did not regret it. But since his death, she’d long since let go of the thought of a home of her own. But what did it matter? She kept her promise. Her mother could rest in peace, for Felicity had picked up her reins and now carted the load that was her father and his debts.